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Contemporary digital artist James Stanford is to exhibit in a Melissa Morgan Fine Art group show alongside artists

Anthony James and Marc Dennis.

Nevada-based ‘digital painter’ James Stanford is known for his complex digital collages of Las Vegas landmarks and neon signs. Combining traditional photography with innovative digital technology, he layers original photographs to reimagine them as rich and enticing digital mosaics. Inspired by the Bauhaus movement, Stanford’s abstract aesthetic features bold colours and mesmerising visual networks.

Stanford’s works reflect a strong connection to his native Las Vegas, featuring resonating symbols like the Old Tropicana hotel or iconic neon signage. His works often combine image and word in highly symmetrical and amplified patterns, wherein a single piece may contain 30 or more layers.

Stanford is concerned with transformative possibilities and artistic expressions of spirituality. For Stanford, his artistic process is akin to meditation. Drawing on the ancient traditions of Buddhism, he conceives of his montages as “modern mandalas” - maps towards inner Zen. As such, Stanford can be said to explore physical environments, such as the enchanting Mojave Desert, in order to unlock psychological landscapes. By transforming reality into imagined realms, his works enact forms of interconnectedness.

Stanford will exhibit a series of his unique and shimmering backlit lenticulars, which create mesmerising image changes as the viewer changes viewpoint.Works featured will include new works and two LasVegas inspired pieces previously premiered at the 20th Anniversary of Asia Art in London in 2017. One of the works, a backlit lenctiular shown in London and Vegas, is a vibrant piece called Recombo Old Tropicana (48 x 48 inches). New works include circular backlit lenticular called Glow Glare Circle (48 inches diameter).

This exhibition follows from the success of Stanford‘s solo show at Sahara West Library, Las Vegas earlier in 2018.

The group show will take place at Melissa Morgan Fine Art on 24th November from 5-7pm.

His edition photomontage series, “Indra’s Jewels,” includes a group of digitally reinvented mosaics of patterns that are at once decorative and contemplative. The vibrant images are reminiscent of physics-like models of space, but also have an immaterial, spiritual quality, evoking the artist’s strong connection to Zen Buddhism.

Using historic Las Vegas neon signage and architectural elements from the 1950s and 1960s, shot in the Mojave Desert, Stanford artfully creates digital montages, mesmerizing designs using unique newly developed purpose specific technology. Stanford’s group of intriguing digital reconfigurations convey and respond to the potency of the mandala as a symbol, and its influence and importance to Asian culture worldwide.

American artist James Stanford’s visually stunning and intricately constructed modern mandala series, Indra’s Jewels, will be premiered during Asian Art in London 2017. This event brings together over 60 of the world’s top dealers, major auction houses and museums for an annual ten-day celebration of the finest in Asian art. Visitors will converge on London for the 20th anniversary edition, which offers gallery selling exhibitions, auctions, receptions, lectures and seminars.

Stanford had this statement regarding the show: ‘It is with great pleasure that I agreed to participate in this important event. I hope my work will not only be enjoyable for visitors, but will introduce them to the great diversity of Buddhist-inspired artwork being produced today.’

As a leading contemporary interpreter of the ancient traditions of Buddhism, Stanford draws from historic metaphor, Chinese fable and the aesthetics of the Tibetan mandala. His conceptually complex and visually sumptuous work, in which the mandala functions as a way to contemplate both immaterial and material realities, has attracted significant interest through gallery and museum exhibitions in recent years.